Safe harbor principles

Last May, Europe imposed new data privacy guidelines that carry the hopes of hundreds of millions of people around the world — including in the United States — to rein in abuses by big tech companies. Almost a year later, it’s apparent that the new rules have a significant loophole: The designated lead regulator — the tiny nation of Ireland — has yet to bring an enforcement action against a big tech firm.Story Continued Below That’s not entirely surprising. Despite its vows to beef up its threadbare regulatory apparatus, Ireland has a long history of catering to the very companies it is supposed to oversee, having wooed top Silicon Valley firms to the Emerald Isle with promises of low taxes, open access to top officials, and help securing funds to build glittering new headquarters. Now, data-privacy experts and regulators in other countries alike are questioning Ireland’s commitment to policing imminent privacy concerns like Facebook’s … [Read more...] about How one country blocks the world on data privacy

The report further asked for 10 guiding "principles" to dictate rules, including accountability, privacy, transparency, human rights and protections for children. The lords also wanted to enforce a general "duty of care" among internet companies, requiring them to take "reasonable" steps o prevent harm. They'd also aim for clearer community content standards through a classification system similar to the one governing British movies.The committee pushed for more specific regulations beyond this. Companies should enable the strictest privacy and safety settings by default, leaving it to users to loosen the controls. If a firm handles data, it would be required to publish yearly transparency reports showing how they develop, buy, use and store behavioral info. The ICO would conduct audits to explore the risks of algorithms, while the government should consider a "public-interest test" for mergers where data plays a role.There's no guarantee this will lead to a Digital Authority, but … [Read more...] about UK lords call for central ‘Digital Authority’ to help regulate internet

Microsoft-owned code-hosting site GitHub has removed the cap on its top payout under its bug bounty and made the program less legally risky for researchers. GitHub is giving its five-year-old security bug bounty a refresh with higher rewards, more products in scope for rewards, and new legal protections for hackers. The company has removed the limit on the maximum it will pay researchers for finding critical bugs. In general, researchers could expect between $20,000 and $30,000 for critical bugs, but GitHub says it will reward "significantly more for truly cutting-edge research". It's also raising rewards at lesser levels. High-severity bugs will offer rewards between $10,000 to $20,000, medium-severity rewards range between $4,000 and $10,000, while low-severity rewards are between $617 to $2,000. "We regularly assess our reward amounts against our industry peers. We also recognize that finding higher-severity vulnerabilities in GitHub's products is becoming increasingly … [Read more...] about GitHub bug bounty: Microsoft ramps up payouts to $30,000-plus

In retrospect, it might have been a clue. But in early 2010, when Kamni Vallabh first began to complain that her eyesight was failing, there didn’t seem to be much cause for concern. She was 51; maybe middle age was catching up with her. Maybe the harsh western Pennsylvania winter—two record-breaking blizzards in as many weeks—was wearing her down. The previous summer, Kamni had been in good health. She’d single-handedly organized her daughter Sonia’s wedding, 300 guests drinking and dancing in the family’s backyard in Hermitage, a tight-knit former steel town. But by her birthday, that March, it was clear that something was seriously wrong. Once a poet, Kamni could barely string a sentence together. She was distractible, easily confused; when she misplaced the TV remote, she’d look for it in the pantry. Her body, too, was rapidly declining. By May, she couldn’t eat, stand, or bathe herself. She had trouble sleeping and spent her rare … [Read more...] about One Couple’s Tireless Crusade to Stop a Genetic Killer

When King George III of England began to show signs of acute mania toward the end of his reign, rumors about the royal madness multiplied quickly in the public mind. One legend had it that George tried to shake hands with a tree, believing it to be the King of Prussia. Another described how he was whisked away to a house on Queen Square, in the Bloomsbury district of London, to receive treatment among his subjects. The tale goes on that George’s wife, Queen Charlotte, hired out the cellar of a local pub to stock provisions for the king’s meals while he stayed under his doctor’s care. More than two centuries later, this story about Queen Square is still popular in London guidebooks. And whether or not it’s true, the neighborhood has evolved over the years as if to conform to it. A metal statue of Charlotte stands over the northern end of the square; the corner pub is called the Queen’s Larder; and the square’s quiet rectangular garden is now all but … [Read more...] about The Genius Neuroscientist Who Might Hold the Key to True AI